In the guidelines for the assessment of presumptive adopters, foster carers, and recipients of assistedreproduction treatment with donor gametes, socio-economic challenges are considered as one of severalrisk factors. This chapter analyses which facets of unsuitability as parent or carer the consideration ofsocio-economic circumstances in these assessments is presumed to identify. While socio-economicdisadvantages are represented as being a direct threat to a child’s well-being, as well as a cause, orindicator, of parental unfitness in the assessment guidelines for donor conception, the consideration of suchfactors in the assessment of candidates for adoption and of prospective foster carers is related to anevaluation of the candidates’ emotional engagement with the child.